Please Invent: A Hindscope!

There was only one TV standing in the corner of our living room. The TV was big, but don't imagine it like a flat screen high definition TV. It was the first generation color TV, with a huge tube and an even bigger box to hold the tube. Definitely, no remote control came with the TV - I don't think remote controls have been invented at that time - and no soft buttons, either. Beside the huge tube, the rest were all mechanical. Every 6 PM my family would gather around the TV, that's when the national TV station started their program. We would enjoy every single show at the same time. When a show made us laugh, we laughed together. When it was sad, we would cry together. A memorable show, clearly, would become a talk of everybody on the next day. The watching-TV-together experience was shared by each member of the family. No one would feel out of the loop.

Twenty years later, all humankind celebrated the coming of the 21st century. The new millennium arrived with all its fashions, visions, and innovations. A GPS that helps you find your destination quicker, without the need of looking at street signs. A smart phone, which actually is a pocket size computer, that enables you to respond to work in a matter of seconds. Frozen meals that are ready to satisfy your hunger in less than 10 minutes. Whether we realize it or not, the new millennium is pushing us to the faster lane from time to time. The new technology, which supposedly will give us more time to rest, in reality makes us busier than ever. It is harder for us to tolerate outdated information, slow internet connection, and specifically, inefficient people! The hidden message: "I want it, and I want it now!" - instant gratification!

The faster I run this life, the more disconnected I am from reality. I remember about movies, games, and music more than my own life stories. Where are those precious memories? Before the brain cells which collecting all pictures, sounds, smells, and feelings of my past die from aging, I have to do something about preserving my old memories. Times when I was floating above the clouds, times when I was crawling up from deep valleys of life, times when all things were just cruising and passing by, and times when life was turned upside down. To be honest, the idea of looking back to my past gives me a goose bumps. Many episodes in my life are better left buried and untouched. But from revisiting the highs, the lows, even the close calls, I surely hope I can understand how God shapes me for who I am right now. How this life was recreaginated!

I wish there will be a machine to replay all events that happened in a person's past. A hindscope. A machine that works like this: after authenticating my DNA for identity and accepting a date input, its monitor would show me a video of all things that I saw with my eyes on that particular date! Imagine how self-reflection would be much accurate and productive. Come to think of it, with data storage capacity getting bigger and cheaper, cameras getting smaller and affordable, computers getting portable and inexpensive, the machine is not impossible to build. Stream of images will be transferred from one's eyes to the storage and indexed by date and time. However, while waiting for this machine to be invented, I will keep writing... and writing... and writing...